


Clarity - JM Asides

by MystiTrinqua



Series: Wings [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Clarity related, Drabble, M/M, Mentions of MCD, Nephilim
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-03-14 08:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3403121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MystiTrinqua/pseuds/MystiTrinqua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Several months after the first oneshot, we see the boys on a hunt that nearly goes wrong but manages to be a chance for Armin to show off the skills he had in his previous life. Just a drabble, really. ^^' Hope you enjoy!<br/>It's set about the chapter 8-10 point in Clarity, if you're interested in where it falls on the timeline.</p><p>Unbeta'd, please excuse mistakes. ^^'<br/>Written while listening to 'This is War' by 30 Seconds to Mars, should you care for some accompanying tunes.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Marco's Tour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AliceMowse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceMowse/gifts).



It wasn't more than a few moments of shy silence after Levi kicked us out of the training room before Marco met my gaze again, those freckles only just showing amidst the blush colouring his cheeks. 

"Jean?"  
  
I watch him for a minute, debating what the question was going to be this time, and whether I’m the one best equipped to answer it. Probably not.  
"Yeah?" I try for nonchalance, but it doesn’t really take. Not when I’m distracted by the thought that one of these days Eren’s going to open his stupid mouth that fraction too much, and Levi really will kick the shit out of him instead of just toying with him.  
"Are they dating?"  
  
Turns out I hadn't been ready or remotely best equipped, choking on the idea of someone like _Eren Jaeger_ having the slightest chance with someone as quiet and severe as the Lance Corporal. That would happen when hell froze over, if you wanted my humble opinion.  
"Not likely." I reply, snorting derisively, and waving the idea away. It makes me less uncomfortable than I expect it to, though. "Levi is sensible enough to avoid utter train-wrecks like Jaeger in there when he sees them."  
  
Besides that, the entire garrison knows that something’s going on between the Corporal and the Commander. We also know better than to speak of it aloud, not least because Levi's iciness concerning personal matters could cut glass. Fuck only knows what Eren sees in his personality that’s likeable, but at this point I wasn't going to touch _that_ hotbed of an issue with a ten foot pole.  
  
"Didn't you and Eren..?" Marco trails off, an unfamiliar tension crossing his face that makes something in my chest clench, because it’s so new – everything about this Marco is new – but at the same time it’s so much like home that it makes a shiver play up my spine that I try not to think about.  
  
"Yeah." I admit it openly, although I wonder who told him and assume it was probably something Hanji let slip if I’d been mentioned while Marco’s wings were coming through. I would never try to hide _that_ little fact from him. Whatever Eren and I had was a temporary support system more than a relationship, and I already know that this Marco might come from a different life, one that I may or may not have been a part of (I was still figuring that out, he’d only got here last night and I was trying to give him some space) but he was still Marco. Still my Marco.  
  
It’s a matter of time, always has been, a matter of allowing ourselves to let everything run its course. Something about the way that he’s resolutely avoiding my gaze tells me that Marco knows it too. Whether he’s _happy_ about it is another story entirely.  
"We were just a one night thing at college. Picked up where we left off for a while. Helped us both cope."  
"Cope? You mean this isn't.. easy to deal with?"  
****  
Marco's voice is hesitant and surprised, like he'd expected something other than this job being hard. Like he'd expected that what was essentially still murder for hire, despite our employers being of the biblical persuasion, would be easy. I shrug, burying my hands in the pockets of my hoodie.  
  
What I don’t tell him is that it isn't easy dealing with the blood on your hands. It isn't easy knowing that if you fuck up, someone who had never deserved it is going to suffer and die all because you weren't fast enough. Weren't strong enough. It isn't easy watching what this is doing to Eren, seeing him crack and splinter and retreat into himself as blood covered his blades, his hands, chest, _face_. While he laughs and stares back at the gore with an intense hatred and a longing for more of the spilled blood that scares me more than anything else on earth. Especially when you remember what it was like watching him hang out with frat boys and laugh over beers and football games and love interests like a normal, sane person. Especially when you factor in his wings.  
  
Something else I'd learnt from paying attention to Hanji was that the colour of a nephilim's wings reflect their general soundness of mind. So what the fuck does that say about Eren? If it weren't for that raven-feather blue he has going on, his wings would be pitch black.  
  
And pitch black is the colour at which nephilim start to wander into Legion territory, apparently. Before the thought of selling your wings for the lure of a demon's contract starts to look like a good way out of what you're feeling. If I’m honest, I’m more scared of that than anything else - having to one day look into Eren's eyes and see him dead and gone, rotted from the inside, before I put a bullet in between them and end him for good. The thought of having to do it to _Marco_ , or to fall that far myself and someone else have to do it to me... It keeps me up at night. Eren isn't the only one who wakes up clammy and cold with the taste of screaming nightmares acrid on his tongue.  
  
Eren hadn't always hunted with me before he was partnered for good, either. Three other people tried, but they couldn't handle it. They couldn't watch the way he tore into the demon's host once he'd trapped them, hell, they ask me how I can still look at him the same. They ask me why I'm not scared of his anger, why I don't think he's a monster. Barely months in and he's already gotten himself a reputation.  
  
I don’t tell them how Eren looked at me the first morning when he woke up, new to it all, wings twitching and unfurling around his shoulders as he tried to get used to having them and, despite looking grateful for it, swore at me for a good ten minutes for waving twenty five dollars at him, a subtle way to see if he remembered the world I did without having to have the awkward moment of asking out loud. I don’t tell them how much he cries when the guilt hits him after he hunts at what he does to the people being forced to act as vessels for the demons he slaughters. I don’t tell them that there’s a difference between being a monster and having a good strong cage on something dark inside you, something that you only let out to play every once in a while, when it’s appropriate.  
Don’t see the point.  
They probably wouldn’t get it.  
  
They haven't seen what I've seen. They don't know what got him here, because he doesn't tell anyone, he barely told _me_. They don't know that he doesn't see this life as a _life_. He sees it as little more than a filled waiting room. A chance to die in a blaze of victorious revenge rather than scared and small and alone on a kitchen floor, cowering at the non-existent mercy of something older and crueller than you. The shutters have already fallen behind his eyes, and honestly half the reason we keep having drunken, frustrated sex against the available flat surfaces in our apartments is because it's the only time he can find somewhere to vent and let it all go. Because for some reason he trusts me enough to make me that person. I don't know whether to be flattered or scared of it, so most of the time I leave it alone. Armin doesn't understand what his problem is quite yet, especially with Levi, but I do.  
  
Levi is his gold standard. His _‘if only I last long enough, I can kill like he does one day’_ , not that I'd call that any healthy kind of motivation. He doesn't give a shit how prickly and cold the guy is face to face. He kills like it's a fucking _art form_ and Eren can't get enough, the shameless fan-boy.  
  
I know that because I've seen him do it. Once Levi goes after a demon it doesn't survive unless he's injured or something else attacks him first and redirects his attention. Levi _earned_ his rank, in bloody cuts and broken bones. I shudder to think what he’d be like to face off against if he was on the other side of this fucked up cosmic debate.  
  
Aware that I haven't answered Marco yet around getting caught up in my thoughts, I cough and shrug my shoulders, staring off down the hallway.  
  
“No, Freckles. This isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.” I reply, starting to walk. Marco follows me without further question but I keep talking anyway. “It gets ugly really quickly sometimes, and it gets as grossly unfair as any other kind of fight. People come back in body bags their first time out, Marco, the bastards we’re fighting don’t care how new you are. It actually turns out they kinda like their meat fresh.” I almost _hear_ the disgusted face Marco pulls at that idea, going a little pale and not really focusing as we go through a door and up a set of stairs out of the basement level and back to the ground floor. I’ve already made the executive decision at this point that Marco doesn’t need to see the interrogation rooms and cell blocks, especially when I can’t remember if they’re in use right now or not. “If whatever Angel you got told you this was going to be easy, then I hate to break it to you, but they lied.”  
Marco falls silent.  
  
I don’t really remember what happened to me when I died, although I don’t make ‘hit by a truck’ metaphors anymore because I actually _was_ , and let me tell you, it was not a positive experience. The eighteen wheeler didn’t give so much as a peep before it sideswiped the driver’s seat and all but crushed me alive, but I remember that the driver had black eyes, and I remember seeing a hand that wasn’t there offer to pull me from the wreckage afterward, people screaming and sirens blaring fading into static around the splitting pain in my head and the creeping fear that I couldn’t feel my legs any more. Turns out reaching for it counted as agreeing to this fucked up mess of a rebirth, and the hand didn’t pull me out of the tangled mess of metal so much as pull my soul directly out of my body.  
  
I don’t know what happened to Marco, and honestly? I _don’t_ plan on asking, not unless he really wants to tell me. I learned with Eren and Armin that as much as you’re friends with someone, there are some things you just don’t want to know about them unless it’s absolutely necessary or they need your help working through it.  
  
It’s far too early for any of that emotional crap anyway, despite the fact that I’m having to remind myself he’s only been here a day as I trail him around the lecture theatres and meeting rooms and office floors, as we come to rest in the cafeteria and pick out something to eat. Turns out watching Eren and Levi spar works up quite the appetite.  
  
“Ah, Pony Boy, just the person I was looking for!” The exuberance of Hanji’s tone and that _goddamn_ _fucking_ nickname (christ only knows where she got it from) make me cringe, fork suspended over my just opened packet of carbonara, and I groan as hands clap down onto my shoulders and watch Marco lean back just a little with a sandwich frozen halfway to his upturned mouth. He’s trying so hard not to smirk, I know he is, because I know that look, and I turn to glare at the pesky head medic.  
“Yes?” I grind the greeting out like I’d rather be sticking pins in my eyes, but she seems completely unperturbed by it.  
“I have a little wager going with our lovely Commander that I thought you might want in on. It might involve a little sharing of information, however.” she replied, a mischievous glint in her eyes that settles anxiety deep in the pit of my stomach.  
“No.” I reply sharply, turning away again.  
“You sure? It’s about Eren and Levi...” she trails off, sing song, and I know she has me. Marco does too given that he’s no longer even trying to hide his amusement, stuffing sandwich in his mouth to stifle the quiet sounds of mirth escaping him. Slowly turning in my chair, I raise a single eyebrow at her in interest. This could be fun.  
“Go on.”  



	2. Red Dot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several months after the first oneshot, we see the boys on a hunt that nearly goes wrong but manages to be a chance for Armin to show off the skills he had in his previous life. Just a drabble, really. ^^' Hope you enjoy!  
> It's set about the chapter 8-10 point in Clarity, if you're interested in where it falls on the timeline.
> 
> Unbeta'd, please excuse mistakes. ^^'  
> Written while listening to 'This is War' by 30 Seconds to Mars, should you care for some accompanying tunes.

_Jean_  
  
I’ll be the first person to admit this situation’s bad. It’s not _quite_ the worst, but it’s.. well, it’s up there. Most people don’t drive in New York, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a metric ass-tonne of parking lots. The kind that are old, mostly made out of poured concrete and home to some of the more questionable forms of human life.  
And I don’t just mean abandoned cars.  
  
So when we got word at HQ that there was going to be some sort of little hook-up between the two major factions of Legion vying for control in the city, and it was going to be in one of these back-of-nowhere multi-story nightmares with blind spots _everywhere_ and a hell of a lot of roofing that meant we couldn’t use our flight advantage, and I wasn’t keen on going anywhere near the place. Then I found out that it just so happened to be our turn on the rota that day when it finally took place. And of course it was at the unsociable hour of 4AM and only emergency staff were around.  
Needless to say, I was _pissed_.  
  
Right now, though, I’m beyond pissed. We’re pinned behind one of the aforementioned abandoned cars, and we’re two floors down from the top. Two. The only thing standing between us and freedom is two layers of concrete and demon meat-sacks with guns.  
There’s four of us here, which would normally be enough for a parking lot’s worth of demons, but two of that four have vanished god knows where, and Marco’s ducked down beneath the cover the car offers with one wing bearing the truly _stellar_ addition of three bleeding exit wounds.  
  
I know he’s in a lot of pain from them but so far he’s just closed his wing against itself to stem the bleeding a little and kept going. People assume that Marco’s a pushover all the time until they’ve seen him on a hunt, it’s like nothing bothers him till he knows the job he came to do is done. Then he can faint and complain and sometimes completely lose his shit with me at just how close we’ve come to dying. But in combat? Not a word. Not a whimper. If he gets hurt, he just gets up and keeps going.  
  
The problem here is that we both know that it’s not just demons up above us, combing the concrete walkways. Just so happens the little presentation most nephilim get during their ‘orientation week’ is completely right about the Legion. They’re hard to kill, and they like picking out on the weak ones. They’re also vindictive as all hell, and the non-intelligent demons react differently around them.  
  
Before my first fight with one all I’d ever seen was the shambling horror-movie-reject possession victims with demons riding them. Put a Legion in over them, though, and it’s a whole different ballgame. If there’s enough of them they don’t even use the human bodies, they just become some sort of shadowy miasma that’s got enough bad juju in it to drop you within five minutes if you’re stuck in it. Or, y’know, pin you down with unseen hands while whichever unfriendly neighbourhood Legion bitch throttles you at their leisure.  
  
At last headcount before everything went wrong, there were about eight Legion in at the meeting, and the lowest and highest floors were swarming with demons. Like that big a number of Legion had attracted them. I don’t know why whoever made this judgement call thought that four newly graduated fighters could take this on, but it might have been something to do with throwing us in the deep end and hoping that if we didn’t sink it’d make us that much better soldiers for it. As much as I don’t really have a bad word to say about the guys making the decisions, sometimes they’re presumptuous assholes.  
Not to mention Eren’s still not quite got his head screwed on right, even with Levi breathing down his neck and trying to make him half decent.  
  
Now both he and Armin are about as useful as a chocolate teapot because we have no clue where they are, and we’re stuck under fire. Armin isn’t exactly the best close-range fighter even when it’s just us, so I’ve got no clue why he insisted on coming along.  
  
“Jean, I think we’re good if you want to try moving to that car on the other side.”  
Marco’s tense voice pulls me back to the situation at hand, and I risk glancing over at him, taking my eyes off the seemingly empty, shadowed space where just moments ago bullets had been raining against the belly of the car we were perched behind.  
  
“It’s a little bit further towards the next floor, I guess.” I mutter, popping the empty ammo cartridge from the .45 in my hand and starting to swap it out so that I can keep returning fire. The minute they knew we’re fresh out of bullets they’re going to charge us, most likely. We’re running short as is but it’s only two more jumps from car to car until we’re upto the next floor. If we could take the stairs it’d be a whole lot easier than fighting up the car ramps, but they’re much further away. Too far, right now. “Can’t hurt. You ready?”  
“Ready.”  
  
We run. Both crouched, fingers on triggers, Marco’s eyes on the spot in front of us we were last fired at from, and me shuffling backwards to keep an eye on anyone trying to creep up on us from behind. My heart pounds, but that’s _finally_ not the only thing I can hear. Whether intentionally or not Eren’s opened his radio channel, and all I can hear is the sound of cracking bones, the wet _shlink_ of a knife entering something thick and a heated growl of _die you spineless motherfucker, I’ll kill you all,_ among other things – just typical Eren in the middle of a fight, really – which means he’s in the thick of it and not coming to help us any time soon. It also explains where Armin went. Or so I think.  
  
There doesn’t look like there’s anything behind us, the floor cold and quiet and dark, as though Eren’s attracting every remaining warm body in the place. He probably is. Then I hear a quiet laugh and hear the cock of a gun. Too late, I turn and raise the gun in my hand. It’s some contemptuous looking dark haired guy about my age with an equally contemptuous look and the barrel of a magnum aimed square at the back of Marco’s neck. Too late to move, I swallow and my eyes widen. I feel my heart thudding dully, but if he decides to pull the trigger, I already know it’s not going to be enough. I’ve got a lot further to move than him.  
“Should’ve stayed out of it, you—”  
  
There’s no noise but I see the bullet pass through the side of his neck and out of the other, and his outstretched arm goes limp. Then the rest of him does, crumpling to the asphalt like a deflated balloon as he gargles blood through a destroyed larynx. There’s no way he’s getting back up any time soon.  
“I got you, Jean. Marco.” Armin’s quiet voice sounds in the headphone in my ear like a chorus of angels. No small irony there.  
“Thanks.” Marco replies quietly, squatting down by the downed Legion whose name I will never know and taking his gun without so much as looking in the corpse’s face. “If you’ve got us, who’s got Eren? Corporal’s gonna be pissed if we let him die.”  
“Oh, I’ve got him too.” There was the kind of vicious amusement in Armin’s voice that set something inside me on edge. Always did, it meant he was actually confident that he could handle the situation and no doubt something he’d picked up from Eren. “A night vision scope and laser sights’ll do that for a sniper.”  
“Shit, I forgot you could do that.” I breathed. Never have I been more glad for all the shit Armin had to go through to get to this point. He won’t talk about it with Eren for reasons obvious to all, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get to hear his story.  
“I haven’t had the chance in a long time.” Armin sighs almost happily while we duck out from behind the second car, and this time I see the small, searing dot of Armin’s laser sight on hearts and skulls as he clears us a path up to Eren, bodies dropping like flies under his precise shots. We don’t even have to fire once.  
  
Marco’s still leaving a trail of blood behind him, though, and it’s tugging at my consciousness like a riptide as we get closer and closer to the rough grunts and hissing fabric as Eren moves from one target to the next. I don’t think about it often but god damn, there’s a reason we couldn’t resist falling back into bed with each other.  
He’s _hot_ when he’s angry, and my unending preoccupation with Marco doesn’t stop me from acknowledging the fact quite freely.  
  
He’s also cornered. There are at least six dead bodies at his feet but the demons are learning that they can’t attempt to overpower him without getting limbs shorn off their vessels without regard. Eren without his guilt for destroying the humans the demons were living through – something I assume Levi has been helping to curb incase it prevented him from acting – and with no one to worry about providing backup for is a veritable whirlwind of blood and death.  
  
We run in just as he’s swamped, his hunting knife hitting the grey concrete with a clatter as a rolling mass of darkness that seems to come from nowhere scoops him up. We can’t see him anymore but we can hear him grunting and struggling, hear the sound of his wings beating against them. Frustrated, like a blackbird stuck in a chimney with no space to squirm. We can’t risk firing shots into the mass unless we hit him, though, and Armin’s laser dot skims the shadows without piercing them as it should, looking for the first opportunity to shoot. I hear him curse airily over the line and the sound mixes in with Eren’s feral growls in an unsettling morass. If he stays in there forever, though, he’ll be unconscious. Ready to be snatched away.  
  
At this point that’s more of a danger to us. Nephilim have been disappearing and it’s no secret how the Legion are doing it – we were hoping that this meeting would shed a little light on the reason why and the ones remaining aren’t any of the main players. All except one.  
  
She looks almost like Marco at first glance, half moon glasses on her freckled face, slightly curly dark hair in an orderly bun and a long white coat that would have been almost a doctor’s if it wasn’t covered in flecks and spurts of blood, picking her out among her subordinates as she walked up to the shadowy ball.  
“Oh, good. Witnesses. Stay there, won’t you, boys? I want to see how this turns out.”  
Neither of us speak a word back.  
  
Ilse was becoming a recurring problem, so much so that she required no introduction to either of us at all, a constant thorn in the side of Erwin’s strategies for controlling the demon population in the city. There was no indication of who she was working for, though, or with. That hadn’t been mentioned so aside from a lot of cuts and a few bullet wounds we had nothing to take back to HQ right now except our lives. Well, I _hoped_ so, but within seconds we were at the typical crossroads of these situations – Mexican standoff style. Great.  
  
The three goons that were with her had AK47’s levelled at us and now Armin was stuck. If he shot, we died. If they shot us first, he’d take them down one after the other. I gritted my teeth and watched the rolling mass of shadows. _Come on, Eren. Get out of there._  
We didn’t have much time, Marco’s soft curse as he tried to move his wing proved that and I instantly moved to support him, allowing him to rest against my shoulder.  
I heard a low growl of frustration and was surprised when it didn’t come from Eren.  
The laser sight flickered from the chest of one of her tag alongs to Ilse’s temple, and she slowly turned her head to put it dead centre between her eyes, obviously believing that our resident sniper didn’t have the backbone. All Armin had to do was squeeze the trigger just a _little_ harder and she’d die and take her schemes with her.  
  
But so would we, all three of us. And Armin knew that.  
I felt my palms sweat beneath the leather gloves protecting my fingers, my mind racing as I calculated what I knew Armin was calculating. Was my death worth more to Erwin than Ilse’s? My arm ached from being raised, my pistol sights on a clear shot to the closest Legion’s temple. I felt cold and shaky, a side effect of the aura poisoning that was a risk of just being around these bastards, but the instant our guard came down so did we, and Marco was in worse shape than I was. He wasn’t even flinching despite most of his weight being against me, all his concentration going on maintaining the stalemate, and whatever the hell it was that let him keep his nerve I really fucking needed it.  
I steeled myself as I heard the sound of a body hitting the floor. It sounded like Eren was still struggling, but I knew he was being poisoned by the negative energy being spewed at us faster than Marco or myself.  
  
“You’re going to have to let that drop eventually.” Ilse announced pleasantly. Five steps and I could punch her smug expression straight off her face. If only I could do it in less time than it’d take to squeeze a trigger.  
“Not before we drop _you_.” Marco hisses back, and my eyes widen a fraction as I glance down at him. He’s sickly pale, now, from both the toxicity and the loss of blood from his wing. Looks like he’s struggling to keep his eyes open but the determination on his face is all the strength I need to keep my aim.  
“Brave words coming from someone who needs the reassurance of a red dot on my skull to speak at all.” Ilse blinked, adjusting her glasses. “Not that it’s any concern of mine, you’ll go down pretty quickly once we have Le—”  
 “Yahoo!”  
  
A new voice breaks clean through whatever she had been planning to say and my smirk blossoms, triumphant, as the red dot on her forehead is replaced by a boot to it. Sasha and Connie have apparently decided to act as air support and Ilse lets out a screech as she’s knocked to the ground. Position assured, one of the guys keeping us in gun-sights lets out a yelp as Armin moves with the surprise attack and takes him out in one shot. Without my help to stand, Marco falls to his knees as I move away to help Connie and Sasha deal with the others. Eren’s flat out on the floor by now, a black mass of energy hovering over him like a dark cloud after spitting him back out.  
  
It’s like the minute Ilse’s concentration breaks the conglomeration of demons all separates again, fleeing the scene in strings of smoking black to leech back into the bodies they’d claimed. They’re all too far away to be any help, though, luckily for us. Floors down and not going to block our access to the roof.  
  
I’m moving the plant my booted heel straight in Ilse’s lower back when I _finally_ hear some support from HQ. Unfortunately the order isn’t what I’m expecting.  
“You got Ilse?” Rico’s voice is rough, like she’s just been dragged out of bed, but I don’t give a shit. We shouldn’t have even been out here without a support worker being on shift but the fact it was an emergency and one long list of fuck ups in general screwed that over.  
“Yeah, I got the bitch. Am I killing her, or taking her in?” By this point I have one hand bending her arm up behind her back to force her face into the concrete, and she laughs.  
“Let her go.”  
_“What?!”_  
“She’s not the one we’re after, Jean.” Rico didn’t sound like she was any happier at the prospect but that was small comfort when because of this bitch Eren was unconscious and bloody and Marco looked like he was about to join him. Neither of them were dead, but it had been a pretty close call for all three of us. “And we’re only going to get that person if you let her run away so we can track them down.”  
“You’re _shitting_ me.” I hiss. Rico was our normal support worker, so she was used to my attitude by now. If it’d been anyone else I might not have been so vocal with my distaste for the idea. Or maybe I would have, Marco was definitely the patient one out of both of us both in fights and out of them.  
“I’m not.” Rico replies. “Feel free to send her back wounded, though. Just no stabbing any vital organs. She’s got to be able to walk for us to follow her home.”  
“Best news I’ve had all night.”  
I’d love to say that I had the restraint to avoid knocking ten bells out of the bitch while I had her prone against the concrete floor. I’d love to say I was the bigger person. Love to.  
But then I remember all the good people we’ve lost because of her, people like Thomas and Hannah and Franz, who barely got the chance to live this life at all before she had them pulled down and pulled _apart_. Then I slam her head against the floor and grind her bloody face into the dirt, and suddenly she’s not laughing any more. Pulling her hair to roll her over, I lean down to remove her broken glasses and her agonised expression becomes one of suspicion.  
  
It hits me, then, that her eyes are the same deep brown as Marco’s. Almost. But they’re full of cruelty and spite and everything I know I’ll never see on Marco’s face.  
  
“Good news. You get to live tonight.” I hiss, still hearing the aftermath of Connie and Sasha engaged in what appears to be a rather fun fistfight, the AK47’s long since knocked away from the other Legion scumbags. Those two are playful but they’re no less deadly for it, constantly tag-teaming to take down people far more annoying than they are. Huffing out a breath, I ignore Marco’s quiet, insistent voice telling me to just leave her and bury my foot into her stomach hard enough to hear her gag and rasp in a choked breath. It’s just enough to satisfy me, and for a few horrifying seconds I can understand just where Eren’s insane bloodlust comes from. “I suggest you get out of New York, before you _really_ get hurt.”

*****

  
Unluckily for us, there’s not really any such thing as extraction by helicopter. It would attract too much attention. We just have to fly – thankfully between Connie, Sasha, Armin, and myself, we have enough strength between us to deal with carrying Eren’s unconscious body and Marco isn’t a burden because one of his wings is having what must by now be severe blood loss trouble.  
  
As soon as we hit the medical ward, I start decompressing. Moblit shoves me down onto a bed as Sasha and Connie sail out, celebrating their little surprise attack with a visit to the cafeteria. Eren still hasn’t woken up but they’ve had to take him to one of our little detoxifying showers to bleed the aura poisoning out of him quicker than just sleep will on its own.  
   
Marco’s wing is going to need stitching so I’m not going anywhere while that happens, sat in cross legged on the bed while Moblit forces a small black stone into my hands. It’s a big enough chunk to hold between both hands and by now I know exactly what it’s for, watching as he puts bracelets of the stuff on both Erens wrists. While I was still human I didn’t believe in all that ‘new age’ shit like crystals and auras for an instant, but it’s different now. I can actually _see_ the black tourmaline between my fingers attracting the negative energy that I’ve absorbed over the course of the fight. The aching fatigue that’s been crowding me and threatening to create a stress headache lifts like a cloud, drained away, and I let out a low sigh, eyes closing as I focus on the stone. Makes it go quicker.  
  
“Jean?”  
Marco’s voice is thick and shaky – that steel-trap mind of his must finally be coming unclasped for the night – and I’m eternally grateful that the colour seems to be coming back to him. He’s got an IV drip in his arm so it looks like they’re getting blood back into him, his dark red feathers stark against the drab white bedclothes. It’s only now that it really starts sinking into me just how close we came to death tonight.  
“Yeah?”  
“I’m.. glad you let her go.” He’s mumbling the words quietly and avoiding my eyes, and that’s rare. That’s the kind of thing he was doing months ago when he first arrived. I’m not really sure why it’s made a reappearance now but maybe this is my chance to get to the bottom of the thing that’s been bugging me. “You looked so angry.”  
“I was.” I had no inclination to lie to him. “Her group have killed a lot of people, Marco. A whole lot. They nearly killed _you._ Wouldn’t you want payback for that?”  
“Not if it means you lose yourself too, Jean. Never.” he replied. I leant back and had to take another breath. He’s looking at me now, and there’s that achingly familiar, warm _something_ starting to hover tentatively in his eyes. The thing I’d been waiting to see, that I never thought I’d see again the first time Marco edged back from me and I realised it was because he was scared of me. “Don’t be like Eren.”  
“Eren’s fine.” I knew he didn’t mean it in any way that spoke ill of Eren in particular, Eren had become inordinately important to both of us to say he was just a co-worker. “Well.. y’know. Fine for Eren.”  
“…yeah.”  
  
Then, just as quickly it came, it’s gone. Marco shoots me the same bullshit cheery smile he’s been trying to sugar-coat all his interactions around me with and I nearly scream in frustration. It said a lot that we had to almost die just for him to open up to me when everyone else just seemed to assume that we were as inseparable and well adjusted to each other as Eren and Armin were. That couldn’t be further from the truth.  
“Hey, Marco.” I wet my lips, wishing I had a drink because my throat is reaching that lovely point of sahara dryness. “You gonna talk about it, yet?”  
“Talk about what?” Marco blinks at me and smiles again, and I can’t stop the deep frown that crosses my face, pulling away from him and turning over.  
“Nothing.” I mutter, tired and achy and wishing we could just get over the hurdle that neither of us had even given a name yet. “It’s nothing.”


End file.
